1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to targeted advertisements.
2. Background Art
Targeting an advertisement to a desired audience often increases the likelihood that the advertisement will be successful in generating commercial activity for the advertiser. Advertisers wish to place their advertisement at the time and place where a potential customer would be most interested in making a purchase from the advertising retailer. Websites often carry advertisements to target potential customers who are visiting a website. Such visitors often select products to learn more about the product. They may even place the products in their virtual shopping cart. Sometimes users may just be browsing and may exit the website before proceeding to checkout. An advertiser may wish to spend its money on a more committed audience.
A more desirable audience is a user that is confirming a purchase being made on the website. At this point, the user has already made a decision to spend money for a good or service. It is at this fleeting moment that the user has provided valuable information and may or may not be aware of other products and services that are highly relevant. Unfortunately, third-party advertisers of products relevant to the completed purchase have not had a chance to display advertisements to the user at this opportune time.
Some existing systems utilize collaborative filtering to display similar items at a time of purchase. That is, when a user selects an item for the user's shopping cart, the user may be shown similar products purchased by other users who have purchased the same product currently selected by the user. However, these offered items are merely other items of the same type or category. For instance, if a user purchases a book, the user is shown other books, not services related to the book's content. Collaborative filtering is often used to determine products of similar interest in the same type or category, but there are two limitations to existing collaborative filtering. First, collaborative filtering is typically employed by the web site using a database of its own inventory of goods rather than a database of third party advertisers. Second, collaborative filtering typically identifies products with similar qualities rather than products which logically would be attractive given the purchase of a particular product. Furthermore, the displayed products shown that have been purchased by other users, as described above, are neither sourced as a “paid for placement” advertisement nor are offered at the time a user has acted on a decision to purchase.